There Can Only Be One

Jambalaya, the third single from Casper’s album Hinterland, is a party that has a point. The video pulls you through a crowded night and drops its message somewhere in the middle of it: there is one original, and you probably haven’t met them yet. Casper—Benjamin Griffey, born in the US and raised in Extertal, which is exactly as remote as it sounds—has always had a preacher’s certainty about him. Not the self-righteous kind. The kind that comes from actually having thought something through before opening his mouth.

He’s been one of the more interesting voices in German hip-hop for a few years now, a rapper who writes verses you want to read as well as hear. Hinterland keeps that up. Jambalaya in particular sits in that space between party record and personal manifesto—it doesn’t demand that you take it seriously, but it rewards you if you do. Whether you walk away knowing exactly what he wanted to say is your problem to work out. The track will stay with you while you figure it out.